Miscommunication in the Kitchen

Being an American with very limited Spanish in a Nicaraguan kitchen, there is bound to be a certain level of miscommunication.  However, I have become increasingly frustrated with what I have grouped into two basic types of miscommunication.  The first, is the obvious language barrier.  Sometimes, Albert will ask me to do something in rapid Spanish, and I'll just stare at him with a blank face and say no comprendo.  This normally leads to a minute of Spanglish between the two of us until I have somewhat of an understanding of what he wants me to do.  Other times, I will think I know what he wants, and once I do it, I will get an earful of "por que?" (why) or "no quieres apprendar" (you don't want to learn).  Many times this can be as minute of a mistake as grabbing the wrong cutting board.
The second type of miscommunication is essentially personal preference.  Both Avraham and Albert are very adamant about doing things in a very particular order and specific way.  However, I often find they teach me to do things not necessarily because its better but because its the way they do it.  So often Albert will ask me to do something- I will do it the way Avraham has taught me- and Albert says I am doing it wrong.  One similar instance is when I was cutting the string off a beef negamaki after cooking it.  I placed the knife under the string and pulled up.  "No, no no, cortar aqui"(cut here) he says- and demonstrates by by cutting the string downward on the side of the meat.  As I proceed to cut the string the way he showed me, chef Q walks in.  "Adam, you're butchering the beef!"  Cut it like this- he cuts it the exact way I was cutting it before being corrected by Avraham.

Update: Where I am Now in the Kitchen

So, when I started at Sushi Q, I was working the cooked food station.  Every day I would prep tempura batter and egg wash for tempura frying.  In addition, depending on what we were low on, I would boil and shock quail eggs then wrap them in bacon, chop cabbage and lettuce for salad, cook rice, devain shrimp for rolls or break down chicken for teriyaki.  I enjoyed these tasks, but typically only two or three of them were needed per day which left a lot of down-time after prep and before service.  I also wasn't crazy about seeing so much of the frier, since the majority of cooked food orders are the fried components of rolls.
However, one day out of the blue, Albert told me I would start my training for sushi.  The first day, I literally did nothing but watch him work.  Since then, first and foremost, I have prepared countless amounts of wasabi- ginger plates.  In addition, when it gets busy, I will often plate and sauce the sushi. The majority of my work, however, occurs during prep.  I arrive before albert to clean and set up the station.  This starts by taking the fish out of the refrigerator, making sure it is fresh and putting it in the sushi display fridge.  Next, I cut cucumber into long, thin strips for sushi rolls, peel and slice avocado, prepare spicy tuna, red snapper and guacamole for our spicy tuna napoleon special and wash (3x) and cook sushi rice.  Once in a blue moon, Albert will teach me something like how to make a sushi roll- which will go to customers- or nigiri- which we eat.  It's certainly a gradual process, but it's progress nonetheless.

My new job: private chef

So, an interesting new track opened the other day.  In addition to my work at Sushi Q, I will now be starting as the private chef for Ben Sandzer-Bell, CEO of CO2 Bambu, a company which builds low-cost post disaster bamboo homes.  My first task was to create a three course meal for his family and two investment officers of LGT (the social impact finance fund of the prince of Lichtenstein).  I was asked to use as many Nicaraguan ingredients as possible to give the dinner a local/ Latin American theme.  The first curveball arrived about thirty minutes prior to dinner.  I was just about finished when I received the news that the investors plane was cancelled and the meal was rescheduled for the next day.  Luckily, I had chosen two of three courses that could essentially be made completely ahead of time (and a quick desert) so all went fine.

First course- Chilled curry corn soup with lime, mint oil and sweet chili sauce

Right when given my task, my first thought was to start with a soup.  Soups are well within my comfort zone and its a great way to start a meal.  To me, the perfect soup is a small portion, packed with flavor  and ideally with a crunchy/ textural garnish.  I cooked the corn in coconut milk along with the bare cobs for extra corn flavor.  The coconut milk gave the soup a very nice richness/ creaminess, cut by the acid of the lime.  My one critique of the dish is that the corn kernels on top were slightly on the chewy side (as opposed to crunchy).  This was probably because they were cooked the day before and reheated.  

Second course- Chiles en Nogada

So there's obviously nothing groundbreaking about stuffing a chile pepper.  With that said, there's something to be said for a classic dish and to me nothing says classic Mexican food like a Chile en Nogada.  Although every Mexican region/ cook will have its own version, the typical Chile en Nogada is a poblano pepper stuffed with meat, fruits, raisins, tomatoes onions and nuts with a crema and walnut based sauce.  For fruits I used apple peach and dried cherries.  For the meat, Chef Kevin from Imagine hooked me up with some beautiful cornish hens.  I brined them overnight in a mix of salt, honey, cinnamon bay leaf and garlic and roasted them the next day.  The sauce is made of ground walnuts, cream, goat cheese and nutmeg.  The tartness of the sauce is nice with the sweet stuffing, but since both aspects are pretty rich, I made a simple salad of greens and tomatoes with a lime vinaigrette to be served family style.

Third course- Caramel bananas with a sea salt nutella chocolate sauce and walnuts

So, I've been playing with savory flavors in caramel for the last week.  Salt really brings out the flavor of caramel, so I have some fish sauce in there as well as a touch of chili sauce.  The addition of the chili sauce isn't to make the dish spicy per se, but to give it a hit of warmth. If you're not particularly looking for it, you may not even notice it.

So, my first private chef gig was a hit.  It was a lot of preparation ahead of time, but this ended up working in my favor. 

First Impressions: Sushi Q - my new "kitchen family"

I arrived in San Juan Del Sur on Friday, the 26th of August (ya I know I majorly procrastinated this blog), and had arranged to meet chef Q on Saturday at 1:00.  However, San Juan being the small town that it is, I wound up running into him in the street.  He told me to come by that night.  As soon as I stepped into Sushi Q (which is literally a stones toss from the ocean), Chef Quesada greeted me and took me into the kitchen to meet my future coworkers:  First off is the sushi chef, Albert.  Chef Q had "hand-picked" him from a sushi restaurant in a hotel in Managua and from the get-go made it clear that Albert is next in charge after himself.  To make matters more interesting, Albert also had an extra room that he was looking to rent out, so for the next few months until I find my own place I will also be his roommate.  Next is Abraham, who is in charge of the cooked food station (where I will be joining him).  Abraham previously worked at Pelican Eyes resort as a bartender.  Last in the kitchen is Alvaro who helps with some prep and washes dishes.  Chef Q asked me when I would be ready to begin.  We had previously agreed on September 1st (this coming wednesday) but my answer was "whenever you're ready for me".  "How about tomorrow morning at 10:00?"  done.  After introductions, I sat down with my family to have dinner.

From vision to decision: how I found myself working in a sushi restaurant in Nicaragua

For the past few years now, I have been toying with the idea of becoming a chef.  Cooking is my passion, and I find myself spending a great deal of my spare time checking out food-related blogs and reading my constantly growing collection of cook books.  My senior year in high school, I staged at an upscale progressive American restaurant near my house.  Two years later, and I am finished with my Sophomore year at the University of Texas, with no additional restaurant experience.  I love college life and living in Austin, however the experience feels slightly unfulfilling.  I didn’t have the same passion for my classes as I did for life in the kitchen.  


That summer was when I decided I needed to make a major life decision.  I would not return back to school, but get a job working in a restaurant.  At the time I was reading Grant Achatz’s autobiography Life on the Line.  One of the things that resonated with me and may have aided my decision process was the tremendous  work ethic and focus toward a single vision that Achatz possessed.  Here I am with similar aspirations to Achatz, yet doing nothing to make my dreams a reality.  The only question remaining was where.  Being a counselor at a camp in Wisconsin made this process quite difficult.  I wrote emails to about 12 or so restaurants in Austin that looked interesting to me.  After getting exactly zero responses, it became clear the only way to land a job would be through a face to face interview.  I only had a couple more weeks to decide whether or not I was enrolling at Austin, and if I had chosen not to enroll but to spend the year in Austin anyway, I would have been risking being jobless and out of school.  

On somewhat of a tangent, rewind one year-  I am in Granada Nicaragua, visiting my mom and step-dad, Ben (who live there) over winter break.  I meet a Nicaraguan chef who has run quite a few restaurants in Miami and Georgia.  He goes by "Chef Q" and tells me he has plans to return to his home country and open a sushi restaurant.  At this point, who knows whether these plans will materialize, but I expressed my interest and took his card.  Remembering this exchange, I decided to contact Chef Q to see what was going on with his restaurant.  It turned out, not only had he just opened, but he had an available position in the kitchen.  The combination of learning a new cuisine, living in another country, learning spanish (crucial in just about any US kitchen) and being a part of a new restaurant seemed like a winning combination.

This blog will be about my experiences working at sushi Q.  Along the way, I also hope to shed some light about what inspires me as a chef (in training), what I'm cooking on my days off/ ideas I'm playing with and current culinary news and trends.